At home in a coffee shop in Seattle, Knox knows there are those who will never believe she is innocent, including her former roommate's family. / Scott Eklund, Red Box Pictures, for USA TODAY

by Susan Page, USA TODAY

by Susan Page, USA TODAY

Excerpts from Amanda Knox's interview with USA TODAY's Susan Page about why she wrote her book, Waiting to be Heard, what could bring her closure and how she's been changed by her sensational murder trial and four years in an Italian prison.

On hoping her book will convince readers she is innocent: 'I am living in this world'

"I am living in this world, and if this world already has a certain prejudice of me and an idea of me, then it's really hard for me to go through it. An example of that is simply how people would confront me in prison. ... Most people came to the prison already thinking they knew who I was, and that changed the way I could ever interact with them. So I want to challenge those sorts of perceptions of me that are incorrect. ...

"And it does hurt a lot to have people think that that's me and that's what, that's the kind of person I am. It doesn't affect me in the day to day. I haven't had people come up and threaten me or denounce me. But it does affect me - me, and the peace that I have inside. And I think that a lot of people in my family feel like: Don't admit that. Don't admit that because they'll just do it more ... the people who won't give up on the things that the prosecution claims and continues to claim no matter how their theory has fallen apart and imploded upon itself. And so it does affect me. ...

"I've wanted, really, to share what I think is valuable about the experience and could be helpful to other people in just confronting really difficult situations and the fact of expressing an experience and someone can recognize some form of that inside themselves. I mean, prison is a classic metaphor. It just happened to be literal. ...

"I really, really want this to not be just about what happened to me, but about what one can do in a bad place. And I'd love for it to open a discussion about some of the problems that surrounded my case - for instance, the idea of a public identity. The idea of trying to find the familiar in the completely unfamiliar. This existential crisis of things happening to you that you don't understand."

On wanting to visit Meredith's grave: 'I wasn't allowed to grieve'

"I really hope that the Kerchers (parents of her slain roommate, Meredith) read my book. And they don't have to believe me. I have no right to demand anything of anyone. But I hope they try."

(Have you contacted them?)

"It's really hard. I've always been afraid of just upsetting them. And I feel like as long as there's question of my involvement in Meredith's death, I don't want to impose myself on them. And I really think that, at least from what I've read, that nothing I could say would make them feel better. ...

"I mean, the ideal situation in my mind is that they could show me Meredith's grave. Because it was like, I wasn't allowed to grieve, either. And that, that would mean a lot to me. But you know what? It's all about what means to them. And if that never happens, then, then that's OK. Because ultimately it's about them. ...

"This trial (ordered by the Italian Supreme Court last month) has been a barrier to that. It's this, this, this field of barbed wire that I'm having to crawl through so I can finally get to the side where, 'OK, we're finally on the same side!' And I can't hail at them when I'm in the middle of the barbed wire."

On considering suicide in prison: 'The thing that I was scared of'

"I have a great amount of respect for life, and I always think that, no matter how bad situations get, you can always make something out of it. You can always do something that can make you feel good about your life despite what you're going through. So for me to arrive at the mind-set that there was nothing good that could come out of my life and nothing good that I could make of it - because it's not about what you get, it's about what you are able to make of what you get - and so to ever come to that point is really, it's not about an intellectual failing. It's about an emotional failing.

"Really, like, to get to that point I think you just have to be so, so sad that you don't even want to try. And that is the thing that I was scared of: That I knew that I would know intellectually that there's something to glean out of life but that I would be so broken that I wouldn't care. I just wouldn't want to fight any more. It's not worth it to me.

"But there's always the fact that I'm not alone. No matter how alone I am in the prison, I have a family to think about. And so I think that it would have to be a really, really, really, really drastic situation for me to go and do that. ... But I did write it down (as a possibility) because it was something that I thought about a lot."

On adjusting to home: 'I had nightmares'

"I had nightmares. I had panic attacks. I had all of those. There were times when I'd just be walking down the street and I'd see someone who immediately in my mind triggered what I was afraid of in prison. They might not even look remotely like them, but it's just this this panic, this panic instinct that had been ingrained in me. Or this instinct of, I'm alone. Like, everyone around me is potentially against me and so I'm alone, and so there's this tense survival instinct that is hard to get out of.

"They recommended once that I see a counselor. Again, one of those residual reasons why it's so difficult coming back. But I went to this counselor, and he was very nice. Not at all invasive. Just sat back and said, 'Talk to me about anything you want. It doesn't even have to be what you went through. Just talk to me about anything you want.'

"And I started talking about the here and now, about the things that I went through, just the things that I was struggling with. Like I was disappointing the people I loved because I wasn't the same person anymore. And I worried and I feared that I disappointing them by not coming back quite the same. And in the process of talking about this very hesitantly - it was a very slow thing, and then all of a sudden it just crashed. I crashed in on myself. And I had to stop, and I was weeping uncontrollably and I just had to leave. I just felt that I was trapped, and I just had to leave, and I called my boyfriend. He picked me up. And then I went home and cried a lot. ... And I never went back."

On becoming a different person: 'A gravity to everything'

"So I went to Perugia very carefree, hopeful, and also, I needed to gain a sense of self-confidence in myself, because I was still young and I was still figuring out who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. So that was something that very much characterized me and my personality at the time. So I'm a little unsure about everything. I'm just a kid who's, who's, who's doing the best I can.

"And coming out of it, I'd say I've gained that sense of confidence in myself that I hadn't had before. I've gained a seriousness that has to do with a certain perspective, a gratitude for being able to see the importance of things. And that lends itself a gravity to everything. And that is something that I sort of carry as a weight but a good weight inside of me.

"And I guess the only thing that maybe is not as great, I'm much more timid than before about being around people. If only before, believe it or not, the one thing I wasn't self-conscious about was being around people and feeling good about being around people, and 'Who are you; who are you?' And 'I am me, I am me.'

And now I'm much more self-conscious when I'm around people, because there's the factor that maybe they know who I am. But more than that I know what it is to have been judged, and how devastating that is. And that has sort of stuck with me in a way that I wouldn't like it to. I'd like to be able to be a little looser, if I could. But I'm still a little tense. And I hope that that will relieve itself in time. And it definitely has gotten better over this year and a half that I've been back. Because when I got back, in the immediacy I really struggled.

"I wasn't used to talking to anyone for more than an hour at a time, twice a week. And it was just very hard for me to relate to people because I was so used to being trapped inside. So this sort of slow creeping out from that - I feel like I'm a snail that has really retreated back in that (shell), so slowly coming back out."

On returning to Italy for the retrial: 'I'm thinking about a lot'

"My lawyers have said that I don't have to and that I don't need to. I'm still considering it, to be honest. My family is like, No! Tina (Andreadis, her book publicist) is like, No! But I've thought about it, because it's not like I feel I'm far away from it. And so I could - I'd go back just to show that it means something to me.

"But that's something I really have to think very hard about. So I can't say for sure if I am or I'm not. But it is something that I'm thinking about a lot. And it's scary, the thought. But it's also important for me to say, this is not just happening far away from me and doesn't matter to me. So somehow I feel it's important for me to convey that. And if my presence is what is necessary to convey that, then I'll go. But I want to see what that involves. ...

"If that were a huge risk, then I wouldn't. I'm not that proud, and I'm not that brave."

On learning about the media frenzy that had surrounded her case: 'I didn't know'

"So there were photographers (at the court hearings). And there was my family, the media things they were doing. And there was the very fact that I was in the media affected the way that people in prison treated me. And there was all that and yet I had no idea what extent it could be. Because it's an experience that is completely foreign to me. It's not like I ever got any attention from the media in my life beforehand, so I didn't have anything to compare it to. . . .

"The media is an incredibly powerful network and a machine that just chugs and there are so many different elements of it and so many different levels of it, and I had no idea. I had no idea about the media. I didn't know enough about the media to conceive what it would be like. And so, to this day, I'd say I don't even have a full understanding of the media and how it's played â?? like what every aspect of the media has done. There are always things that surprise me. . . .

"No, I didn't know, and I did not expect the helicopters when I got back home to the airport and I did not expect the paparazzi who were ferociously chasing us through red lights and snapping pictures in our faces going: 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry' â?? and no, you're really not sorry. If you were you would stop doing it.

"So it's this huge thing that is so powerful and I'm only learning now really how big it is and what it is. Because as I was writing my book I was focused on that and I didn't want to be influenced by other things. I really wanted to be true to what I had experienced before. And I was so, so careful. And I also just couldn't deal with it for the longest time. I just couldn't. I couldn't watch things that were about me and my case, I just couldn't. I just couldn't. But now I'm able to."

On coping: 'I was lost'

"One of the things that I somewhat realized, especially right after I was convicted, was that sometimes really, really horrible things happen for no reason. . . I'm not Nelson Mandela. I'm not a Holocuast survivor or non-survivor. I'm not. But sometimes bad things really do just happen, and people are wrong about things, and that is so true about humanity, and for that reason - I was sad about it. I was angry about it. I was desperate. I was lost - like I didn't know how to understand that that could be me, that I could be a small, small speck in that spectrum of, like, crap. . . .

"It's still this struggle that I cry about and I get angry about when I'm alone, and that is frustrating and that's incomprehensible in a lot of ways. But at the moment, being angry about it and being sad about it, again, doesn't help me. So I have to really just try to be patient enough to work my way through it."